Getting access to top-tier stock research doesn’t have to be costly. In fact, there are many free stock research sites that investors can use to take a deep dive into stocks they’re interested in buying.
We’ve put together a list of our six favorite free stock research sites:
Best Free Stock Research Sites
The six free stock research sites we highlighted all offer different tools for investors and different ways of analyzing stocks. We’ll explain what each of these sites does and why we think they’re great platforms for investment research.
Best Overall – Yahoo Finance
Yahoo Finance has long been a favorite free research site among investors. It’s a great place to find detailed financials, historical price data, earnings estimates, and institutional ownership data for US and foreign stocks. Yahoo Finance also provides company-specific news feeds and interactive technical charts.
On top of stock data, Yahoo Finance offers watchlists and portfolios, price alerts, and a basic stock screener. There are few advanced or proprietary tools on Yahoo Finance, but that‘s part of this free site’s appeal. It’s incredible to look up the data you want about a company without jumping through hoops.
Key Features
In-depth financial data for thousands of stocks
Market news feed
Basic technical charting tools
Stock, ETF, and mutual fund screeners
Best for Research-Driven Investors – Seeking Alpha
Seeking Alpha is a spectacular platform for taking a deep dive into stocks. The platform provides more granular financial data than what Yahoo Finance offers and makes it easy to spot trends in a company’s fundamental metrics over the past four years. There are also dozens of metrics that focus specifically on a company’s valuation, growth potential, and profitability.
Another great aspect of Seeking Alpha is that the platform offers opinion articles from a wide variety of contributors. There are typically many different articles for any individual stock, enabling you to read both the bull and bear cases about a company. You can only read a limited number of articles for free each month, but even scrolling through the titles can give you a feel for sentiment about a company.
Seeking Alpha offers a ton of additional features with a Premium subscription, which is only $49 for the first year and comes with a two-week free trial. It’s worth giving Seeking Alpha Premium a try if you’re interested in a paid stock research service.
Key Features
Very granular financial data for US stocks
Detailed metrics for valuation, growth, and profitability
Wide range of opinion articles for each stock
Two-week free trial of Seeking Alpha Premium
Best for Scanning – FinViz
FinViz offers one of the most comprehensive free stock screeners we’ve seen. It includes filters for key valuation ratios, popular technical indicators, share structure, price performance, and more. The only major limitation to using FinViz for free is that data is delayed, but this isn’t usually an issue for investors with a medium to long-term investment horizon.
Another aspect of the FinViz stock screener that we love is that you can display screen results as miniature charts. This is so much better than having a table of ticker symbols if you’re interested in finding technical setups. The charts are automatically annotated with moving averages and trendlines, making it easy to spot promising patterns as you scroll through your screen results.
FinViz’s bubble plots are also worth checking out. You can plot up to three fundamental or technical metrics on a single chart for all stocks in any market sector. It’s a great way to conduct a quick, visual peer analysis.
Key Features
Comprehensive stock screener with fundamental and technical filters
View screen results as annotated charts
Save screen results to watchlists
Bubble plots for visualizing fundamental data
Best for Stock Ideas/News – Motley Fool
The Motley Fool is best known for its paid stock-picking services like Stock Advisor, but this site also offers a surprising amount of free research. Motley Fool analysts write daily articles about stocks that are making headlines or that investors might want to pay more attention to. In some cases, these are the same stocks that Motley Fool is recommending to its paid subscribers.
These analysis articles can take several different approaches, including discussing a single company in detail or surveying multiple companies across a sub-sector. In any case, they usually provide a pretty clear verdict on whether investors should consider buying a stock or steer clear of it.
This is free investment guidance, so take it with a grain of salt. However, Motley Fool articles can help you find investment ideas that you might have overlooked or explain why a specific stock is moving sharply up or down. Take a closer look at Motley Fool here.
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Key Features
Daily articles analyzing stocks
Offers straightforward buy or avoid verdict
Explains why specific stocks may be moving sharply
Best for Charting – TradingView
TradingView offers outstanding technical charts. In fact, TradingView’s charts are so good that many paid stock research platforms and brokerages now offer them.
Free TradingView users can access all of the platform’s technical indicators and you can build your own custom indicators using the platform’s script editor. You can also import indicators from the TradingView community forum, which has more than 100,000 custom indicators available. The sheer volume is a bit overwhelming, but there are some really powerful custom strategies that you can overlay onto your charts.
There are a few significant limitations when using TradingView for free. You’re limited to adding three indicators to a chart at one time. You also can’t view second-based charts and you’re limited to one alert (TradingView alerts are extremely customizable and go well beyond simple price alerts). There’s a free 30-day trial for TradingView’s paid plans, which start at $14.95 per month.
Key Features
Build your own custom indicators
Community forum with 100,000+ indicators
More than a dozen chart types included
Available on iOS and Android
Best for Stock Ratings – Zacks
Zacks is a great platform for in-depth fundamental stock research. It offers detailed financial data, earnings estimates, analyst recommendations, ownership information, and more.
What’s really nice about Zacks is that every stock receives an A-F grade across three categories: value, growth, and momentum. This makes it easy to see at a glance whether a stock is worth further research. Zacks also ranks each stock within its industry and gives it an overall rank on a 1-5 scale, with 1 indicating a strong buy rating from Zacks analysts.
Zacks offers a comprehensive stock screener, although you can’t filter by stock ratings unless you sign up for a Premium subscription ($239 per year). The full list of #1 ranked stocks is also behind a paywall, but Zacks reveals 10 #1-ranked stocks to free users every day.
Key Features
Ranks stocks on a 1-5 scale
Rates stocks based on value, growth, and industry
Ranks stocks relative to industry peers
Reveals 10 #1-ranked stocks every day for free
Free vs. Paid Stock Research Sites
In general, paid stock research sites offer more tools than free research sites. Paid sites may offer stock picks, additional financial metrics or technical indicators, or simply greater access to the content a platform provides.
However, that doesn’t mean you can’t get quite a bit of information out of free research sites. For many investors, free sites offer all the tools they need to generate ideas or choose investments. Assuming you don’t have infinite money to spend on stock research tools, it’s well worth taking advantage of what’s available for free.
Many paid stock research sites offer free trials. If you think you could benefit from upgrading to the paid version of a research platform, take advantage of these trials to see if the additional tools make a difference to your investing.
How to Choose a Stock Research Site
Since the sites we listed are free, you don’t necessarily have to choose between them. You can use some or even all of them in combination to get a full picture of a stock.
That said, it’s worth thinking about what you need out of a stock research site. Some platforms offer in-depth fundamental data, others focus on charting and technical analysis, and others offer tools for narrowing down the universe of stocks to candidates that fit your investment strategy.
Try out different free research sites and see which ones actually speed up your research process or help you identify better stocks to invest in. If a research tool isn’t helping you invest more efficiently or more successfully, move on to a different platform.
FAQ: Free Stock Research Sites
Are free stock research sites good?
Free stock research sites often have excellent tools for fundamental and technical analysis. Sites typically offer limited access to their full suite of tools for free. So, these are the same tools that many investors pay for, just with restricted features.
What is the best free fundamental stock research site?
Investors looking for free fundamental stock research can check out Yahoo Finance, Seeking Alpha, and Zacks. All three sites offer an in-depth look at fundamental ratios and financial data.
Where can I get free stock picks?
Few platforms offer ready-to-buy stock picks for free. Investors should be wary of those that do. That said, you can use platforms like The Motley Fool to generate investment ideas or Zacks to find stocks that analysts recommend as strong buys.
🏆 Top Rated Services 🏆
Our team has reviewed over 200 services. These are our favorites:
